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ISOLE interview

Hi there. One of the first things I noticed about The Calm Hunter (and your songs in general) is how poetic and descriptive the lyrics are. Where you draw lyrical inspiration from?

Crister: Most of the inspiration comes from real life experiences and the lyrics of Isole are therefore sometimes very personal. I also read some poetry (mainly Swedish poetry) which affect the way I write lyrics I suppose.

While we’re talking about the lyrics, what (or who) is the Calm Hunter? The song lyrics suggest that it is death, but I’ve never heard it be called that before.

Jimmy: It’s a concept Crister came up with. People have always done everything they can to try and stay young, to keep death away. But it’s always there, watching your every move. Death itself just calmly waits for when the time comes. Hence the title.

In my review of your album, I mentioned that, to me, it seems that quite a few doom bands end up moving away from metal and usually become more avant-garde/prog over the years. Do you think this is true? Do you think there’s any reason why bands move away from doom?

Jimmy: I wouldn’t say that they move away from doom. It’s more like adding more flavour to it. I can’t really speak of how other bands do things but for us, at least, it’s just something that’s been growing since the day we started playing together. Since I come from the more progressive side of the metal scene I guess it became pretty influential when I joined the band.

Relating to that, how have you guys stayed so focused on the epic doom sound over the years without feeling like you’re repeating yourselves?

Crister: We have never focused on the epic doom sound, in my opinion we have always tried to explore new territories musically and some of our songs aren’t that doomy. We write music that we like and we don’t specifically try to be a doom band. Since we are quite fond of minor keys and dark atmospheres the music will be sad and dark I suppose, I’ve always thought about Isole more or less as a heavy metal band with dark influences but somehow media and fans have put us in the doom genre.

The band has had a couple of lineup changes recently. How do you see this affecting your sound?

Jimmy: My influence is what you hear on the new album. Moving forward it will be interesting to see what our new drummer Victor Parri brings to the table and what we end up creating together. Whatever we end up doing we know it will be dark.

You made several releases under the band name Forlorn back in the 90s. What prompted you to change your name, and why did you pick Isole as the new name?

Crister: There were a lot of other bands with the name “Forlorn” back in the 90´s and we didn’t want to be mixed up with them so we chose to change our name. Isole has a bit of resemblance to Forlorn. Isole is kind of like isolation in French or island in Italian.

Finally, what do you plan on doing next?

Jimmy: First off, this friday (28/11) we’ll celebrate the release of the album and say farewell to Jonas as we welcome Victor to the band. After that doing some touring and festivals in 2015. And maybe we’ll start looking at ideas for the next album in late 2015.